Our metropolis has two great wings pointing eastward from both ends, north and
south. And such is the wing-spread that Chicago could nestle comfortably within
it.

*

There is a stretch of unused subway under Tremont Street, running south from the
Little Building under the present Tremont Street Subway. It continues under and
beyond the present Broadway incline, and as far as the railroad tracks. This
bit of subway contains a station platform, unused since 1908. The name of the
station is Pleasant Street, by which name Broadway used to be known before the
last war; so that now not only are the subway and the station forgotten, but
there is no longer even a street by that name. The explanation of this unused
subway is that, from 1901 to 1908, elevated trains used to run through the
Tremont Street Subway, and during that time, the present trolley outlet to
Broadway and Tremont was blocked up to allow trains to use the lower-level
subway, stopping at “Pleasant Street” (now Broadway), and emerging to an
elevated structure over the railroad tracks and continuing by Castle Street to
join the lines to Dudley Street or to Atlantic Avenue. In 1908, the elevated
trains were detoured into Washington Street, and the lower-level subway on
Tremont Street has been healed up ever since. On the south side of Broadway,
the roof of the old subway is now used as an auto parking space.

*

In the period of the American Revolution, several shiploads of Loyalists were
sent to Nova Scotia from Boston. Hence the expression, “Go to Halifax.”

*

The East Boston Tunnel was the first under-water tunnel in America, started in
1900 and opened for use in 1904. For the first twenty years it was used by
trolleys, and originally ran to a “Court Street” station at about the location
of the present Odessa Restaurant―the old station may still be there under the
restaurant. An extra cent “toll” was charged for the use of the tunnel,
collected at the Boston end of the trip. In 1916 the tunnel was extended at the
Boston end. To do this, the dead-end Court Street Station was closed, and the
tunnel extension was directed downwards from Devonshire Station (the bend at
that point is quite obvious), with a new lower-level station at Scollay Square.
The “toll” was then removed, and cars from Cambridge and from Charles Street
were brought into the tunnel by an outlet at Lynde and Cambridge Streets to
Bowdoin Station. The old outlet, unused since 1924, can still be seen at that
point. In 1824, the substitution of trains for trolleys in the East Boston
Tunnel left the Cambridge Street end of the tunnel unused, and a new station at
Maverick Square was put in as a place to change from trains to trolleys.